Welcome UWM Advisors!  

We are pleased to present these web tools (checklists, exercises, handouts) that address a variety of career exploration and development issues for your use with students. We you will find them useful in working with your students on successful educational and career planning.

By way of background, you may recall from ACN presentations, that we received an Access to Success grant to conduct training and develop web tools to assist advisers in gaining confidence and competence in career development as part of academic advising.

We know from a survey conducted in 2008 that advisers spend a great deal of advising time on career issues. See the power point slides from the 2009 Access Conference presentation. The following quote from Vincent Tinto, Ph.D. captures the essence of our work here:

"Perceptive advisers encourage all students in transition to focus first on exploring life, career, and educational goals. Then students in transition seem better equipped to select educational programs, choose courses, and schedule classes.”  

You are encouraged to view the “Career Development Model” for a useful introduction to career development process, tasks and resources for students. Many of the tools in this UWM Suite of Career Tools are interactive and can be saved on hard drives and disc. We suggest that your students may want to use these tools in a variety of ways depending on their learning preferences, available time and your advising style. Suggestions include:

• Students may complete one tool on your PC/laptop in your office while working with you. The tool can be saved to your computer and later sent to the student for saving or completion.

• Show the student the advisor toolkit while in your office and collaborate to select one most useful to their educational/career planning. The student leaves your office with the link and sends back the completed tool. They might print it out and bring it to their next advising session as well.
  

• Simply send or give the link to the student and follow-up later to see if any of the tools were useful.
  

We look forward to your feedback on creative ways you may be using the tools with your students.

Tom Bachhuber, Career Development Center
Nadya Fouad, Department of Counseling Psychology
Linda Huang, Office of the Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs